SC - Oh happiness and joy!

Wed Aug 30 18:13:18 PDT 2000

A friend just gave me a pizzelle iron for my birthday.  He knew I’d
sort of been looking at them, and he thought it would be nice if I had
one. [I wonder what he meant by that :-) ?]

So, first thought: run get most recent version of Stefan’s wafers file
:-) !

After reading it, I decided I’d really like to try the Saffron Wafers,
but I don’t have any pastry flour (need to shop) and I don’t have a
mortar & pestle to grind my saffron threads (need to shop?); so:

Q1)  How do I grind up saffron threads without a mortar & pestle?

Q2)  I’ve been thinking I need a m & p, but most of the ones I see are
marble, and being a lapidary-type, all I can think of is how soft that
is, and won’t I end up with a lot of extra calcium carbonate in my
food,
and how porous it is and won’t they absorb and transmit flavors?  So I
thought I’d rather have an agate one, or possibly ceramic; but if the m
& p are both of the same material, and they grind against each other,
will this mean little bits of whatever-it-is will end up in my food,
and I’d rather have tiny easily dissolved bits of calcium carbonate
than tiny insoluble quartz grains?  Or is there some actual culinary
advantage to one over the other?  Or is this just too silly to worry
about?

I decided the first thing to do was make up the recipe that came with
the iron.  Never having made any type of wafers, or seen them made, I
thought this would give me an idea of what the batter was *supposed* to
look, feel, pour, and cook like.  Well, there were two basic recipes in
the booklet, one called Italian Pizzelles (“thin...crisp...delicious”)
and one called Southern Italian Style (“harder and heavier”) which has
very different proportions and which says to roll the dough into 1”
balls and then smoosh them between the plates of the iron -- I’ll save
that one.  I made the first one.

Worked like a dream -- the iron is electric, Teflon-coated, makes 2 5”
wafers and has a little latch to hold it closed so it gets even
pressure and your hand doesn’t get tired.  It says to grease it once at
the start of the baking session and then not again (says oil spay works
well, and Pam did seem to).  Said to cook approx. 30 seconds depending
on your preference on browning, and to get a little color I settled on
40 seconds.  It was fun!!  And they tasted just like the real ones you
buy!  Ooooh, I had to play more.

Back to the wafers file.  Since I had a half-pint of heavy cream, I
decided to make a half-recipe of Adamantius’s version of the recipe
from Markham.  They came out okay, but not like the first recipe (not
that they HAD to, but...) ; they didn’t stiffen up much, and are still
a bit limp (though of course I made them on a humid day), and they
didn’t brown as well.  There are a few differences in the recipes,
both below, which might cause the differences.

Italian Pizzelles (from the booklet that came with the iron)

3 eggs
1/2 tsp. anise seed or extract (optional) [I used extract]
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1-3/4 cups flour (all purpose)
1/2 cup butter, margarine or oil, melted [I used oleo margarine]
3/4 cup sugar
pinch salt

Beat eggs and sugar.  Add cooled melted butter or margarine, and
vanilla and anise.  Sift flour and baking powder and add to egg
mixture.  Batter will be stiff enough to be dropped by spoon.  Batter
can be refrigerated to be used at a later time.  Makes 30 pizzelles.
[actually about 32]

Markham Wafers [1/2 recipe]

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 pint heavy cream
3 large egg yolks, beaten
2 to 4 Tblsp. rosewater
1/2 cup sugar
1/16 tsp. ground cinnamon
(1/2) pinch salt

Sift flour, cinnamon and salt together; set aside.  Beat the egg yolks
and sugar together until light and bright yellow.  Add the cream and 2
Tblsp. rosewater, mix thoroughly.  Fold the dry ingredients into the
liquid.  If the batter is too thick, you can thin it with more
rosewater until it is clearly a soft batter but too thick to easily
pour. [I did add 1 more Tblsp.; actually about half that would have
made the batters equivalent textures.]  [Made almost as many as the
other recipe -- now how do I get rid of all of these?  Oh, yeah, give a
bunch to the friend who gave me the iron.... ]

So right off, the second recipe has no baking powder, but generates
PLENTY of leavening effect from steam so that’s okay.  It has a HIGHER
sugar/flour ratio, so should be crisp, right?  But doesn’t have any
egg whites, which set them and bind them, right?  The Markham says
“eggs,” is there any particular reason you used only the yolks in your
redaction, Adamantius?  I think I may try it with whole eggs
sometime, but not until these first two batches are gone. :-)

I don’t know exactly what difference the fat from butter vs. fat from
cream makes - though 8 ounces of even heavy cream has a good deal less
fat than 8 ounces of oleo.  Might this make a difference in browning? 
Or stiffening?  According to _Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful
Cooking_ (does anyone else know this book?  The science of cooking --
tons-o-fun!) an acidic batter doesn’t brown as well as an alkaline one,
but sets better; don’t see anything that particularly makes either
batter one or the other, since the baking powder contains its own acid
to offset the soda in it.  Markham wafers didn’t seem to set as well or
brown as well, so I don’t know that that makes any difference.

I am very curious, and will let you know how the Saffron wafers go when
I make them -- they not only call for pastry flour (which should make
for a tender, light-colored wafer -- thank you, _Cookwise_ !) but
powdered sugar and even more of it, and egg whites instead of yolks or
whole eggs.  

Q3) Has anyone made these, and what did they turn out like?

And just in general:

Q4) I have a bottle of rosewater that I got in a tiny very chi-chi
grocery that says on it “Rose Flower Water” and “Produced in France 
Net Wt. 3 Oz.” and that’s all.  I assumed it was food-grade, mostly
because of where I got it; but people always say, “Hmm -- tastes like
soap.”  I had one woman at an event tell me this was mostly just a ‘guy
thing’ -- most guys smell any hint of rose, and that equates with
soap in their minds, while more women tend to be more flexible.  What
is the general experience of this?  Or could mine have gone bad, and
how do I tell?  How long is rosewater good for?  (It’s in a dark blue
translucent plastic bottle.)

Q5)  The pizzelles made with the anise extract were a nice mild cookie
- -- I might even give it a wee bit more next time; but I have had
pizzelles that were really sinus-clearing strong, and I don’t know if
this is solely a matter of taste or a confusion between anise extract
and anise oil, which is much stronger.  How much stronger?  Is there a
conversion factor?  

Q6) And how long are these flavoring oils good?  My mother has some
(anise and wintergreen) labeled from a pharmacy that hasn’t been around
for 20-25 years -- do these go bad?

Anyone else playing with waffers?

- -- Harriet

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